A MUST READ FOR EVERY EMAIL MARKETER:
In 2011, it was reported that only 4 out of 5 or 81% of permission-based emails reached the inbox. That means 20% of legitimate marketing emails never reached the intended recipient.
Is your email program performing as well as it should be?
Email deliverability is VITAL to your email marketing success. After all, an undelivered email cannot be viewed or clicked on. Keeping your list up-to-date by running regular list hygiene practices will help maintain good sender reputation scores, increase inbox deliverability and boost the performance of your marketing campaigns.
Maintaining deliverable addresses in your database and ensuring more of your organization’s emails reach the inbox is not an impossible task.
Let’s get started by identifying 5 email data issues that may cause your emails to bounce and how to fix them – before they happen.
1. General formatting, typos or syntax errors
These invalid emails are mostly due to addresses being entered incorrectly. They are often from people who are legitimately trying to receive your messages – and never actually receive them due to an error. (Ex: bob@@yahooo.cmo or bob2hotmale.com)
Running your file through Anchor’s list hygiene will help check for these errors types, flag them on your file and give you the option to recover the otherwise invalid emails with an updated email address replacement.
2. Dead, invalid or bogus domains
There are large quantities of free email sites that often stop offering email services to customers, leaving many emails dead or no longer working. (Ex: anglefire.com, athome.com, altavista.com) If you send to an email using any of these domains, they are likely to deliver to a catchall mailbox, and will not notify you of a bounce back.
Our Email Validation service uses a “domain-knocking” process that determines both if a domain exists and if a mailbox on that domain is able to receive emails. This validation process is performed with out having to send an actual test email.
3. Email Address Changes
About 30% of email addresses are changed annually due to relocations, job changes, adding extra email addresses, or switching Internet Services Providers.
An email change of address doesn’t mean contacts do not want to hear from you.
Running your file through our permission-based ECOA (Email Change of Address Update) service detects undeliverable emails and updates them with a new deliverable address for each contact.
4. Email Bounce Management
A soft bounce is when an email address is temporarily unavailable. For example, a recipient may have an “out of office” or “away on vacation” auto responder on, or their mailbox may be temporarily full. Most commonly, 3-5 soft bounce retries will be had, before an address is determined a hard bounce and removed for good.
A hard bounce is when an email addresses is permanently non-deliverable. Once an email is hard-bounced, it is important to not try and resend to that address. Trying to do so can trigger email clients and or ISPs to define you as a spam sender, damage your sender reputation score, close your email account and/or blacklist your domain IP address from sending emails all together.
Sending emails and receiving a high number of bounces will tarnish your ISP reputation, almost immediately. Save time, money and avoid being blacklisted by scrubbing your file through our email validation process, first! We’ll detect undeliverables and bounces – before you deploy your campaign. Plus, we can also process Email Change of Address updates and supply you with a new deliverable email in its place.
5. Spam Traps, Do No Email List, Cellular Domains and Maintenance Addresses
Mailing to any of these types of addresses can lead to being permanently blacklisted, breaking privacy laws or losing your ability to send emails altogether.
Although removing and identifying “spam traps” from lists is very difficult, Anchor can help minimize the risks in mailing to these records by suppressing “known” spamtraps. Other risky email addresses such as fake emails (asdf@asdf), maintenance addresses (info@domain.com), known bounces, DMA do not email and cellular domain email suppression are more easily identified and very effective in keeping your email marketing compliant.
Catching undeliverable email addresses before your campaign deploys is one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase deliverability rates, maintain good relationships with ISPs and stay connected with customers.
Every company can benefit from running their email file through email list hygiene regularly. Receive a FREE Email Validation Test Today!
